I just watched this for the 1st time in 11 yrs & i'm in shock to come here expecting this steaming turd of a movie to be ripped apart in every post as it so deserves & there are some of you who seriously liked this more than the original!
I really liked it because I felt the acting was better, and the story was
told. I preferred it to the original.
i mean, Kubricks was no masterpiece i know. it had its share of issues but COME ON.
everything from the casting(Steven Weber, seriously?)to the dialogue to the pacing of this thing is a joke & a bad one at that.
Steven Weber actually did a very good, clever job of playing Jack. He was just so evil. Just look at his crazy expression when he comes out of the elevator, saying "Congratulations, Dick! You're a Publisher's Cleaning House winner! And here's your prize!" That was totally unexpected. And then when he sings to Wendy: "Come along and be my party doll, come along and be my party doll, come along and be my party doll, and I'll make love to you. Oh, Wendy. Do you remember it was our wedding night and I sang that to you in bed? You laughed so hard! You laughed so hard I thought you was gonna wet your pants, not that you were wearing any pants at the time."
And his best bit of acting was when he had Danny cornered, and the only make-up he had on was a bloody gash across his face, and sometimes he looked evil, sometimes he looked normal. And that was the point of the novel! Jack changed back and forth really quickly. Nicholson was evil the whole way through, and, therefore, not scary. I believed that Stephen Weber was trying to fight it. When Nicholson was 'acting', you could tell he was acting, if you get what I mean. I could see how Weber was scary.
the little boy in the original would win no prizes(i think it was his 1st film & it showed)but this kid, OMG, ugh.
ugh in every way. i mean, where did they find this kid? was he related to one of the producers? won the part in a contest?
it wasn't so much his performance as it was him in general.
Neither of them are my Danny, but I did prefer Courtland Mead, mostly because they used him a lot more, and he was a better actor. You can't say 'him in general', because we are supposed to be judging which is better on their performances, the filming etc., so don't bring in 'him in general'. You're basically saying you didn't like him because of the way he looked. So he had an overbite. So what? It's like me saying: "I didn't like
Fargo, because Steve Buscemi is 'funny-looking."
& the way some scenes were stretched out over 10 minutes(to justify 3 nights of viewing i suppose)is insanity. especially the scenes in the lobby of the hotel, OMG talk about never ending! i know that ABC wanted to get their moneys worth but honestly!
the original had some run-on scenes that could have been cut but at least when you got past them, there was genuine creepiness to be enjoyed. not some censor-approved shtick that ABC made sure would appeal to mom & pop.
where the original had this bizarre moodiness about it, this was just pure cheese(the lights just flickered! the chandelier just shook! spooky!). like, let's lose the slaughtered twins & hedge maze & instead have some super cheesy CGI topiary lions(that only get about 60 seconds of screen time total).& they were sorry looking at that.
If you have read the book, you will see that some of the scenes
are dragged out for a long time. It adds to the suspense and atmosphere. Danny never sees the slaughtered twins in the novel, and there is no maze either. That is why this version is STEPHEN KING's. It is
his adaptation. He didn't like Kubrick's, so he wasn't about to keep the Kubrick feel in it. The CGI lions were a let-down for me, because they don't really
move in the book. They just sort of looked away, and then the animals were closer. The only time [in the book] they really 'moved' was when they came after Dick near the end.
& how many times can you get the word "Sidewinder" in a script?
i lost count.
i did enjoy Rebecca DeMornay over Shelly Duvall for both her performance & overall appearance. King wrote the character to be much more like the former than the latter anyway.
Elliot Goulds phoned-in performance at the start of the film said it all.
i was laughing out loud it was so bad. but you can't blame an actor when they have nothing else to work with.
What's wrong with saying 'Sidewinder'? I bet you can't count how many times you've said your home-town in you entire life. Or over the gap of six months. Rebecca DeMornay was much better, but then again, she was STEPHEN KING's Wendy. That is how I imagined her in the book
to a tee. Well, Ullman's character was supposed to be up his own ass, so that is how he would have acted, especially seeing as he didn't
want to hire Jack in the first place; he wanted to seem above him -- that's why they don't shake hands.
The Shining (1980) -- 5/10
The Shining (1997) -- 9/10
Danny: You're not my daddy.
Jack: What a clever little boy it is. Or thinks it is.
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